


Is It Love?

by softtlsp



Category: Arctic Monkeys, Last Shadow Puppets
Genre: Angst, But maybe not, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Mentions of Sex, Possibly Unrequited Love, alex thinks a lot, but it's ambiguous, sorta stream of consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2018-10-09
Packaged: 2019-07-28 10:37:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16239905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softtlsp/pseuds/softtlsp
Summary: Miles accidentally confessed his feelings for Alex. Now, Alex is struggling to figure out his own feelings.





	Is It Love?

**Author's Note:**

> I apologize in advance, I kinda made myself sad with this one. I tried to be as realistic and honest as possible with what I think Alex's feelings might be, though of course I know literally nothing about anything. 
> 
> Nothing actually happens here, as usual, it's basically just my imagining of Alex's thought process.

Alex has been in love many times. He knows how it feels. Or, at least, he thinks he does.

It always happens the same way. He falls fast and hard and doesn’t look back until it’s over and he’s left with a painful hole in his life that he needs to fill. And so it goes, all over again. For better or for worse, he knows that dance.

 

“ _I love you,_ ” Miles said. He didn’t say it in the way they normally do. Alex understood instantly that it meant something different. They were both drunk at the time, but Alex remembers it perfectly. The rough timbre of his voice. The way he immediately looked like he’d seen a ghost, like he was terrified of what he’d just let slip into the night.

He knows Miles remembers, too—can tell from the way he’s been acting off around him for the past couple of days. Alex has been doing his very best to pretend that he has no idea, that he has no memory of that night past when they stumbled into the cab and that he doesn’t notice how Miles has been avoiding eye contact since. He needs to put it off, whatever reckoning he knows is coming once Miles figures out that he knows, because he isn’t ready yet for what that conversation will entail.

 

Alex, to put it shortly, is confused.

He’s been in love. Recently, even. And it didn’t feel like this, like him and Miles. If he’s being honest with himself, nothing else ever has. But if it’s not love, this thing between them, then what is it?

He thinks about it carefully, goes back over the history of his friendship with Miles and peers at it through a magnifying glass. He screws his eyes shut tight and focuses on how he feels when they’re together, isolating that unique feeling that only comes from Miles and examining it from all sides. He paces around his flat, face frozen in a frown, and just keeps thinking himself in circles.

He takes the way he’s felt about every other important person in his life and puts it next to Miles, and finds there’s really no comparison. Which is frustrating.

He sighs and sits down heavily on the settee in his painfully empty flat, tries to clear his head, lay this out one thing at a time.

 

Miles is important to him. Obviously. He tries to imagine his life without him, and it’s pretty much impossible. He imagines losing him and actually grows cold all over, has to deliberately ground himself with deep breaths. But that doesn’t make it love, does it? There are plenty of people who are central to his life, without whose support his foundation would crack.

He thinks about what it’s like when they’re together, when they’re AlexandMiles, always a unit in everyone else’s eyes, and, honestly, in their own as well. It’s easy; natural. That’s not what he’s used to, with the people he’s been in love with. With them, it’s often felt like paddling upstream. But that made it exciting, gave something for his love to fight for, and against. When he’s with Miles, he feels instantly understood. He laughs hard and often, and he feels free to let his goofy side out in a way he doesn’t with most other people. Then there’s their nearly telepathic connection, that uncanny meeting of minds that allows them to work and perform together seamlessly.

With the women Alex has been in love with, he couldn’t necessarily tell you why he loved them. It didn’t feel like something you could spell out, not a simple equation where their positive and negative traits were all added up to equal love. It was just more of a gut feeling, a loss of control, a need to be with that person. Miles is different. He could easily list all the things about Miles that he loves, that make him so special and such a great friend. He admires Miles as a musician, loves watching him go wild on the guitar, the way he just feeds on the energy of a crowd. Miles is so much his opposite in the way he interacts with the world; he’s energetic and charismatic and extroverted, but somehow Alex never feels outshone by him. They make each other laugh, deep from the gut in a way he rarely does with anyone else. Miles is ambitious and hardworking and overwhelmingly positive. Whenever Alex needs him, Miles is there with such heartfelt and gentle care, and just listens in a way that makes Alex feel so completely heard.

In short, Miles is Alex’s best friend for a reason. He’s great, and they’re great together. But that doesn’t mean he loves him as anything more than a friend, does it?

His thoughts are becoming more and more muddied. It’s gotten dark and he hasn’t thought to turn on any lights; hasn’t noticed.

So what else is there to love other than appreciating a person for who they are and enjoying their companionship? Sexual attraction and compatibility is perhaps the biggest piece that keeps most friends from becoming lovers. With Miles, though…Alex isn’t sure he can count on that. It’s a boundary that’s been tested—and possibly crossed, depending on your interpretation—between them countless times. Miles is an attractive man; he would have to be blind not to see that. And it’s not like he’s not aware of the sexual tension between them onstage. It’s something that’s always under the surface, and that he plays up for the audience and also for his own sake, if he’s being honest. It’s a thrill. He never meant anything by it.

Well, sure, if he’s laying everything on the table, he’s thought about it. It’s not like he hasn’t noticed Miles’ long fingers wrapped around the neck of his guitar or the elegant strength of his thighs. Maybe once in a while his best friend slips into his mind late at night when he’s alone, or not so alone, and maybe if things were less complicated he wouldn’t mind making those thoughts a reality.

Surely there has to be more to love than friendship and sex, though. Some secret ingredient that makes you want to hold hands sitting on a park bench and write songs about them and wake up in the morning to their breath on your face. And that…extra thing—that isn’t there between him and Miles. Is it?

Still…when he thinks back to that moment, and the honesty, the vulnerability in Miles’ eyes, there’s an ache in his heart that’s difficult to push aside. He wants to hold him and cradle his head in his hands and tell him that he loves him too, if only it will make him happy. He wants to make Miles smile, and give him whatever it is that will keep him smiling, and grab his hand tight to let him know he’s there.

Now _that_ …that’s something different. That impulse is one he can’t quite explain.

Alex realizes he’s been pacing his flat again, probably for quite some time. The neighbors downstairs can’t be happy about it. He throws open the front window to let in the night air, leans heavily on the windowsill. He feels like he’s on the edge of something, like when he’s got the perfect lyric hiding somewhere on the tip of his tongue. So he keeps digging.

Miles is his best friend and closest confidant. When he really thinks about it, he wants Miles there next to him, pretty much always. With him, he’s more comfortable, more himself than he is with anyone else. They share a bond that is undeniable, incomparable to any other relationship, forged by the length of their friendship but also by some inexplicable, instant connection; a meeting of souls. When he’s sharing a stage with Miles and their eyes meet amidst the fray, he gets something akin to butterflies in his stomach. Miles would do anything for him. Miles will be his friend, his creative partner, whatever he needs him to be, and he’ll never complain.

Miles loves him. And not in the way they usually mean it.

 

Alex has been in love before. He’s written countless songs about it that seem to have rung true to people across the world. So he should really know the ins and outs of what the word means. He should know by now what is love and what isn’t. But he’s not so sure anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, hope you don't hate me now <3 Fluff coming soon!
> 
> You can find me on twitter @softtlsp


End file.
